[dm03514]

What’s the furthest a recipient will be forced to travel? How many offices per population area? What’s the current rate of calls and direct deposit modifications? At that rate what load will it put on the offices? How long is the average interaction? What will the throughput be if the current office staffing?

[toomuchtodo]

Like onerous voting regulations, the goal is to disenfranchise.

[dzhiurgis]

Ah yes most europe is disenfranchised

[tzs]

Are you referring to most of Europe requiring voter ID at the polls?

If so that is not comparable to the US because in Europe they actually try to make it easy for people are are eligible to vote to actually get the required ID.

In the US the states that have added stricter voting ID requirements have done things like:

• Close the offices that issue ID in areas that tend to vote against the party that is imposing the ID requirement.

• Reduce the hours that the remaining offices will issue ID, often meaning that to get an ID you have to visit in a middle of a weekday. For poorer people this can mean losing a whole day of work to try to get ID, and can be expensive because the states doing this tend to have poor public transit. These people are also more likely to vote for the other party.

• Allow alternate forms of ID for people who don't have a driver's license. This should be a good thing, but when you look at what alternates are allowed you find things like a state issued hunting license is acceptable but a state issued student ID from a state university is not even though the hunting license and the student ID are both equally is reliable when it comes to showing identity. They say it is just coincidence that people with hunting licenses are far more likely to vote for the party imposing the ID requirements and people with student IDs are far more likely to vote for the other party.

In addition it can cost $100 or more to get the documents needed to get the ID, which is a significant expense to many less well off people (especially added to the lost wages in states where they have to miss work to get the ID).

If they proposed voter ID laws that included funding to help people get IDs so that the above problems went away most of the opposition would go away.

But they never do because the point is not to prevent the fraud that they say is happening (but can never find any evidence for). It is to make it hard for people who vote the wrong way to vote.

Further evidence that is the real goal can be seen by looking at the other things they are doing, such as reducing the number of polling places in areas that vote the wrong way so that there will be long lines. That discourages people from voting in those areas. They also have made laws criminalizing providing food or water to people in those lines making it even harder for people to stick it out until they can vote.

Another trick is to go through the registration list and purge people for whom there is some doubt about their continuing eligibility to vote. Normally that's a good thing and is a normal part of a well fun election system, but it can be turned into a disenfranchisement tactic by doing such a just before an election and not trying to notify the purged people so that they only find out when they actually try to vote. I'll give you one guess which party does most of the "just before the election" purges and which districts they are more likely to do them in.

A purge that is not intended as a disenfranchisement tactic would occur in the years between elections and those purged would be sent notice so people would have plenty of time to reregister if they were still eligible.

How many of the things described above are also done in Europe?

[sebazzz]

In Europe (NL) secrecy of your vote is generally valued in high regard. So you don't register as voter for a political party, and get the voting card sent home - which you then hand in at the voting station which can be open from 6:00 in the morning to 22:00 in the evening. At the voting station the id check is performed.

[xtiansimon]

> “Another trick is to go through the registration list and purge people…”

I’ve worked at election polls in New York for every election since 2012. There is a lot of noise about enrollment here, and confusion about the laws. People who are deceased for years, but have not been removed. Some youth return home to vote, but actually live elsewhere.

And voter ID is particularly contentious. Every election someone holds up the line to debate the issue. Certainly in my community many voters have above average incomes, and they can’t imagine what the inconveniences could be as they drive to the polls and fetch their drivers license from their wallets—a whole series of commitments which happen to support their mistaken beliefs of secure elections (check your privilege).

So when someone tries to argue it was too easy to vote, I remind them—first, they are asked to identify themselves by name, to provide their address as the challenge question. Their signature is their oath and affidavit that they are the named voter. Finally, to make a false claim is a felony.

Harley efficient fraud to impersonate one voter at a time, in a room with 750 of your local neighbors who could overhear your fraud and contest your vote. With early voting, and mail in voting the registered voter could have already voted. What’s more, it was the case you could overwrite your mail-in vote with an in-person vote on the date of the election. That is no longer permitted. So the hypothetical fraudster could strike out—so no, it’s not very easy.

I feel proud to see my colleagues help my neighbors vote smoothly and efficiently

I asked the bureau of elections that I work only in my local districts, so I guess theoretically I could also contest a vote. But here’s the amazing thing, even if someone contests your vote and fills out our paperwork and gives their information, that contested voter can still vote by giving their oath they are who they say they are. Wow! This is what democracy looks like to me.

[dzhiurgis]

You are shifting goalposts...

[esseph]

I'm not sure what you mean because given the context, that phrase you said does not make sense.

Can you say it a different way? Specificity would help.

[dzhiurgis]

The problem isn't requirement of ID, but how hard is it to get an ID to begin with? It does seem to be almost uniquely US problem (even when 90% of voters are also drivers).

Given social security, where you are about to receive thousands of dollars in support while you are unemployed, why would a $100 ID matter? Like if you can't even pull up your pants and organize this key item of life, why should you receive support?

Voting is more interesting one. Supposedly better educated and better well off democratic voters aren't able to procure an ID? WTF I am reading?

[orionsbelt]

Do you not believe their statement that there is $100M of fraud? If you do believe it, do you think it is worth fixing?

[toomuchtodo]

I don’t believe one thing they say, as almost everything they’ve put forth has been a lie or exaggeration.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/03/us/politics/doge-musk-con... | https://archive.is/2025.03.08-181114/https://www.nytimes.com...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43121408

[drweevil]

Read the following contradiction and tell me they are not trying to disenfranchise:

> Retiree advocates warn that the change will negatively impact older Americans in rural areas, including those with disabilities, mobility limitations, those who live far from SSA offices and have limited internet access.

> The plan also comes as the agency plans to shutter dozens of Social Security offices throughout the country and has already laid out plans to lay off thousands of workers.

This isn’t a good-faith effort to save $100M. It’s nefarious.

[orionsbelt]

The ID verification changes are limited to the following scenarios:

1. To complete the final identity verification step when initially applying for benefits. This happens only once in a person's life.

2. If one wants to change which bank account their payment gets direct deposited to. This should happen very rarely for someone that is elderly, has mobility limitations, etc. Perhaps once or never.

In addition, the identify verification can be done online in a modern way, very easily.

A $100M estimate for current fraud is well within the realm of reason and is supported by trend lines from prior Biden-era publications.

The people you are worried about "disenfranchising" are therefore the following set: someone who has nobody close to them that could assist them with a basic website sign-up and ID verification online application, who cannot figure it out themselves, and who cannot travel somewhere in person for whatever reason.

What other institution - other than the federal government - would willingly allow $100M of fraud to occur to avoid inconveniencing the above group?

I acknowledge this policy may harm some people, but so does $100M of fraud, which is only getting worse every year.

[tzs]

The could do just as much fraud reduction but with less harm to legitimate beneficiaries by not closing as many offices or by making it so people can do their identity verification at post offices.

Post offices are already set up to do ID verification for the government—that is one of the ways you can do ID verification when creating a login.gov or ID.me account if for some reason you can’t use their online verification methods.

Since login.gov or ID.me is what they want you to use for doing online SSA stuff if the post office is good enough for setting those up they should be good enough for directly verifying for SSA.

This would provide a way for many people who for whatever reason cannot do online verification and don’t have a nearby SSA office an option since post offices are we more plentiful than SSA offices.

[clipsy]

> I acknowledge this policy may harm some people, but so does $100M of fraud, which is only getting worse every year.

In other words: who cares if hundreds or thousands of people lose the entitlement they spent their entire lives paying into? It's much more important to eliminate fraudulent payouts that account for 0.006%[0] of social security's annual payouts!

And when Trump pisses 1,000x as much away on tax cuts for the wealthy you won't say a word.

[0]: https://www.ssa.gov/news/press/factsheets/basicfact-alt.pdf

[chneu]

Trump and his cabinet spend nearly that much on prescription drugs. This has nothing to do with eliminating fraud.

[insane_dreamer]

Doesn’t explain why they’re cutting SS offices

[roxolotl]

I mean… $100M of fraud is kind of a joke. Taking this statement at face value we’d be talking about a fraud rate of less than .01%. The US spent 1.3T on social security last year. A .01% loss rate would be absolutely remarkable and an incredible success given the massive benefits to society social security provides.

[m463]

It seems like it is fraud perpetrated against specific people who have their social security deposits redirected, instead of payments to fake people.

[roxolotl]

Don’t get me wrong I’m not trying to say we shouldn’t attempt to mitigate fraud. I’m saying that when presented with a problem it is important to apply a cost benefit analysis to the solution. This problem is relatively small. The proposed solution is very heavy handed. That makes me question the rationality of the solution.

[fzeroracer]

Do you have any reason to believe in their statements? What happened to skepticism around whatever government officials tell you?

[Eddy_Viscosity2]

They are simultaneously cutting staff and closing offices while artificially increasing demand for both. I don't think this is being done in good faith.

[ADent]

I know there are overseas recipients - so possibly quite far.